When I was asked if my creative team would be willing to accept submissions for some of our most music-intensive shows, I was excited by the prospect of hearing what the midem community would present us with; while at the same time somewhat concerned that our overflowing schedules would hinder us from properly acknowledging as well adequately managing the expectations that come with such an opportunity.

I speak on behalf of my entire music supervision staff when I say that we were over-whelmed by the number of submissions (2000+) and because the number was so high, we never had the time that we wish we could have been afforded to give each submission quality feedback. We are grateful for everyone that took the time and we wish you all the best of luck with your music endeavours. There’s so much talent in our music community and as major music fans, we do our best to hear what we can, but we know that there is an endless pool of amazingness out there that we will never be able to personally hear.

I addressed in an earlier guest post the importance of making pitches that both adhere to the creative directive, as well as being limited to what you feel is your very best option for the project. Many submissions were concise and the bios offered great insight as we listened, however a large number of the postings contained more songs than were feasible to review given the sheer number that awaited us and were also from genres that a little research would have shown are not right for any of our current shows (gospel, children’s songs, novelty….).

The biggest challenge of this project was having to narrow down to the 5 that really stood out when there were so many more that were equally good. Our decisions came down to the feasibility of being able to place the songs at this time and if we can continue to access the submission site, I know we all hope to reach out to some of you personally to see if we can get more of your music for consideration.

So without further ado, here are the 5 retained acts!

– Cry For Us Black Swanshad the ethereal alternative rock with great vocals and awesome melodies that lends itself well to many of our programs. Specifically, “Fire Attracts Bats” has the cool vividness that would work incredibly well in many “Being Human” montages.

– Sweet Janehave beautifully haunting vocals as well as wonderful driving hooks that make them a perfect indie rock candidate across the board. Their submissions were diversified and all would fit within a majority of our shows. “War Cry” was a particular standout.

– Pixikill offer great anthemic energy and vocals equally awesome. “Vampire” was the song that struck us the most, although everything we heard was engaging and worth submitting to our shows. We’ve been producing quite a few female empowerment projects as of late so this is a genre that gets much attention by our supervisors.

– Alsace Carcione is a really cool female hip hop artist, which is remarkably still a rarity. We really liked “On My Grind” and our need for hip hop also crosses all of our programming as there’s always a party scene on the horizon or a younger character hanging in their room.

– Mitch Gettman‘s submissions were real stand out energetic songs with brilliantly surprising changes. “Counting Sheep” totally went in a direction that none of us expected, which is what gets us all excited about music in the first place…that little gem that knocks you off your feet when you think you know what’s going on.

Once again, thank you all so much from the NBCUniversal TV creative Music team (myself and Stacy Wallen-McCarthy, Kerri Drootin and Oliver Hild). We’ll be in touch soon!

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